Answer: What is "The Government supports programs that encourage the production of viable taxpayers". The student saving money? She/he isn't stuck in a perpetual circle of debt and certainly isn't generating as much sales tax required to keep the government Ponzi schemes going.

ThatGuyGreg:A family with a million dollar house earning $200,000 a year is most likely horrifically in debt, or if not, a layoff or health problem not covered by insurance away already in bankruptcy court.

No they won't. I don't have time for this shiat today, because my actual students have sent me actual FAFSAs to review and I've been out of the country for a week, but take it from me: I've been doing this for a decade.

Never understood why people think student aid should only be for the poor. People that make money then have to pay for their kids, as well as poor people's kids. And God forbid you go back to school as an adult when you have a good job.

Earn $50K a year and have $200K in savings? No one in this planet is that good with money. My girlfriend heard someone call into the Dave Ramsey show who earned $8,000 a month, married with one kid, who had over $42,000 in credit card debt alone. Plus the wife, who earned her own income, had credit card debt of her own. Most people are idiots when it comes to budgeting.

I'm still bitter about having my aid be tied to my parents income, despite them not actually paying for my tuition. I actually lost all aid my sr year because they sold a failed business and made money on the books, despite all that money going to medical bills.

And a person with a Hispanic last name will get twice as much financial aid as one with a "white" sounding name, even though the Hispanic family makes nearly three times as much as the non-Hispanic one...

DubyaHater:Earn $50K a year and have $200K in savings? No one in this planet is that good with money. My girlfriend heard someone call into the Dave Ramsey show who earned $8,000 a month, married with one kid, who had over $42,000 in credit card debt alone. Plus the wife, who earned her own income, had credit card debt of her own. Most people are idiots when it comes to budgeting.

I'm 38, and while $50K is not my salary range, I do have about 4 times my salary in savings (including non-retirement investment accounts, as I assume that's what FAFSA looks at). Granted, I've been lucky in a lot of ways, and I wouldn't be there if I'd had kids when I was in my 20s.

brap:I like Senator Warren's plan of allowing students to borrow at the same rate as banks.

Stupid idea is stupid. The problem with the system as it currently stands is too much free money and too little competition. You want to fix the college tuition problem then go on a Federal University spending spree, Federally mandate that tuition start at 5,000 dollars a year and only rise at the rate of inflation.

what_now:No they won't. I don't have time for this shiat today, because my actual students have sent me actual FAFSAs to review and I've been out of the country for a week, but take it from me: I've been doing this for a decade.

FEDERAL AID DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.

The article was about Private Colleges endowment grants not federal aid.

what_now:No they won't. I don't have time for this shiat today, because my actual students have sent me actual FAFSAs to review and I've been out of the country for a week, but take it from me: I've been doing this for a decade.

FEDERAL AID DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.

I am sorry; you have actual real-world expertise and knowledge in this field. You do not belong here.

Your comments will be ignored, or random Farkers will contradict you with no references or sporadic references to unreliable sources.

$200k in savings is a lot of money, not sure what the issue is that the government might expect you to spend it before they start giving you money for college. That's the way things have always worked. When I went to school, my parents, who don't earn a lot, had some modest savings thanks to my grandmother, who had passed away a year earlier. You know what they did? Built a 2-car garage for their house with it. Increased the property value and I got more loan money for college. Win-win.

TheEndIsNigh:I'm 38, and while $50K is not my salary range, I do have about 4 times my salary in savings

If your HHI is $100k and you live on $50k, you're a skinflint but nobody bats an eye.

If your HHI is $40k and you live on $20k (and kids are involved), you're running on the edge of a visit from social workers. Sure, there are kids in families with $20k incomes, but they are also qualifying for free lunches, food stamps, school-fee waivers, etc, that you don't qualify for as a hyper-frugal moderate-income person.

FAFSA indeed only looks at non-retirement accounts. This is one of the real reasons to tie up as much as you can in IRAs/401k/HSAs. The tax benefits are really minor if you're in the boring end of the tax brackets. You pay taxes now or later... and dividends/capital-gains are already at 0% for most average earners... all pretty much meh. But, a bankruptcy court will typically not touch your retirement accounts and it's not real money for FAFSA consideration. Those are major advantages.

Yeah, I really don't believe the claim in TFH, and don't see it directly in TFA. Savings is definitely a big consideration in financial need, but income seems to be even bigger. I tried some moderate shenanigans to improve my FAFSA, but still got nothing better than offers for unsubsidized loans. So I kind of dread going through that for kid #2, it was pretty tedious and our savings have increased pretty well since the first.

I've saved more than that on about 60-70K here in Montreal. Cheap apartment well below my means (and lease from 1999, with state controlled increases), t-shirts, no car, no kids. Also, all the money I save I put into retirement savings which are tax deductible. Then I get a nice return at tax time, which I put back into retirement savings.

And I still spend without thinking because I figured it all out years ago. Oh, look, a 2000$ quadcopter? No problem. Food's not on special? Buy it anyways.

That $200k is savings, not retirement. Retirement investments are not required to be disclosed when applying for financial aid while income history and 'cash on hand' is. Aid is provided based upon need, and if you have $200k in the bank, not counting retirement, you have little need. I would also think that $200k in annual earnings (but no savings) would also not have any need. You don't provide mortgage information when you apply.

50k/200k is not preposterous at all for a family that has college age kids. Basic retirement planning says you should have 14x annual pay in savings by the time you retire. The first key is to get a job from the 50K box, the second key is personal responsibility.*

*Let me say this about that. Personal Responsibilty is a great code for YOU to live by. Personal Responsibilty is not a cure that can be applied to social ills.

Thunderpipes:Never understood why people think student aid should only be for the poor. People that make money then have to pay for their kids, as well as poor people's kids. And God forbid you go back to school as an adult when you have a good job.

Because most people are not terrible human beings like you.If you can afford it without aid, then you clearly don't need the aid.I see it as being greedy, like going to a food bank, when you have more then enough money for food.

I remember this is exactly how it worked when I was about to go to college. My parents on a good year earned 45-50k combined, had socked away 30k in savings and our house was probably worth about 400k(they got it for 150k back in the mid 90s). When the FAFSA stuff came back all my richer friends who lived in the better more expensive half of the city got 2-3K of free money. My letter told me that I was going to get nothing. I was greatly annoyed. It's not that I felt entitled to free money(I won't turn it down if offered though), it's that people whose parents earned far more got free money.

1) Set up bullshiat college2) Enroll ALL of the poor people3) Demand billions in Pell grants from the federal government4) Hand Monopoly degrees to students5) Collect on loans from as many graduates as can repay on waitress wagesFor-profit schools amount to a mass scam, transferring money from tax payers to con artist faux education executives. The Pell Grant needs to die. It might hurt some poor middle-performing students in the short term by forcing them to go to a public school instead of a private one, but it will cause tuition to come screaming down in the free market. The Ivy Leagues will continue to give merit scholarships to top performing poor and middle class high school graduates if they want to preserve their reputations.